What surprises me about the US holding out,is with the Metric System you can get more bang for the buck as it is easier to break it down by the millilitres and charge accordingly then it is to charge by the pint or gallon, take our stupid system for example...

You guy's pay $2.50 per Gallon for gas, that's (without using Imperial or US exchanges) 0.6250 per Ltr, we on the other hand are currently paying 0.7789 per litre which converted to Gallon is $3.12 per Gallon, see how easy it is to baffle the consumer into thinking it's better if it's metric...

So with that reasoning, I am surprised most of your agricultural industry doesn't use the Metric System as they would get more Dollar back for less volume, when converting Lbs to Kilograms....but seeing as how we are both in a recession, maybe now they will rethink this and finally embrace the Metric System, has to happen as we are becoming more and more Global and a lot of the specs out there for most any product is in Metrics, everything from Electrical to Engineering to shipping and transportation......etc...

Quite some measures in the military are still designated in or derived from the empirial system even outside US/UK, for example bullets. The 556 NATO rounds are derived from a .223 cal (or something) and there's the .50 cal still, etc.

Then again, most europeans don't even know that .50 means half an inch. Actually a friend of mine thought it to be a weight measure or something medievalish like the carat. Extreme example maybe.

I'm working on a NASA project for my college where we've had various people say we should work with SI, or we should work with IP (US). Some of our customer's targets are specified in metric units, while others are in US customary units.

Basically all of the scientific goals have metric targets, while the practical goals are given in US units. With how many times the practical goals have changed, it would be a PITA to do conversions to metric to figure out how to address the changes.

In the end, we had to stick with US units because we can't source metric parts - they're just not available to us in the time frame we have. And also because we understand US specifications - we have text books with them, and lots of other books with them, as well as people who have experience working with them. I can't say the same about metric specifications.

There are some engineering specialties that would be much easier with metric units. Such as refrigeration and heating engineers. But we have to work with architects and other engineers, so this means we need to stick with the status quo to avoid any surprises.

Until I can buy all of the standard metric parts at the corner store, and then place orders for more unique parts and get them turned around in time, I don't see any rush to change. It's much more convenient to use American parts. I also own a Harley Davidson motorcycle, so I'm pretty used to using American pieces. Though some uninformed person made a bracket that has metric threads cut into it as an after market part...one of these days I'll have to redo it with American threading and sizes...

America actually 'adopted' the Metric system back in the 1970's, then decided it would be too much hassle and gave it up as a lost cause. This is why you see both English and Metric measured nuts, bolts, etc. here, and our speedometers all read in both Mph and Kph.

Metric is pretty much the standard in science and engineering, unless, as Timaxe pointed out above, you run out of the metric ones and have to use something.

Will we ever go fully metric? After hearing for years that we'd never see a black president in God's lifetime, I can no longer say probably not, but it's still highly unlikely at least until the baby boomers die off and a large movement takes place to teach our kids to use it rather than the English system.

The one thing a customer service specialist can never teach is 'being nice.'

Well...we had just adopted the metric system at the time...so it was actually blamed on the fact the people gassing up the plane couldn't understand the significant difference between metric and standard measurements...so instead of gallons they fueled it up in litres without making the necessary conversions.